Hardware

Question

performance upgrade

Im thinking about installing a third sata drive in my computer (a solid state maybe about 100gb). I currently have two in there now. The Solid state would be for the OS only, the 250gb (that I currently have as the main) for all programs to be installed on it), then the 400gb (that I also currently have installed) to be used just for storage (like all my music and movies and what nots). The question is, what would my possible performance gain be and can you install programs on an internal hdd with the OS on that drive?

All Answers

Multiple Harddrives

On a "normal" computer you only have one hard drive. On this computer you open up a music file. This hard drive has to pull data for the music player application into ram, then pull the music file into ram on top of normal OS operations.

If you have 3 drives (OS, apps, and data) then the workload gets split up between those 3 drives. It won't be a huge difference but it will be a performance gain, at least theoretically. You may notice nothing at all if you have a bottleneck somewhere else. For example if your RAM is really the weak point in your system any speed gain the harddrives will give you will ultimate be unnoticed because the it all gets slowed down by the ram. It's like a Ferrari behind an elderly woman driving a station wagon.

one last question

if on the first hdd (the one with the os) i decide to format and reinstall do i have to also format the second hdd (the one with all the installed programs) cause the programs on the 2nd hdd are associated with the 1st hdd with the os?

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